Well, I still use my SGI machines. I've an older Indy, that just is a file server and an O2 that still makes a great desktop machine.
Over the years, IRIX and SGI have been good to me. Thought I would put a few things down here that were worth it:
-never lost a filesystem. Many folks I worked with carried their configuration from machine type to machine type over the years. (indy, o2, octane)
-love the interactivity of the desktop. Still do actually. It's clean, fast and makes sense. The extra desks function is just great for administrating lots of PC machines these days. Just run vncviewer on as many desks as you have machines to handle and go. Since IRIX ignores ctrl-alt-delete, when running full screen one forgets they are not on the local machine at times.
-be sure and swing by nekochan.net. Great IRIX community who loves the machines.
My O2 is slow sometimes, but it sure corners well. One thing I just love about IRIX is it's task scheduler. Even when the machine is just hammered, it's interactivity remains very high. Wish we could see more of that in other OSes today. We do, but it just does not feel quite the same.
-Red mouse pointer! Brilliant, have made a set for every OS since.
OS documentation! Oh man, if we only had that level of documentation for other Oses. Not only do you get to understand how your OS works, but also get an education at the same time. I miss the 'sgi way' of thinking about things the most sometimes.
My biggest peeve was with the 320 / 540 series machines. Shared memory like the O2, but with a nice fast CPU. (I know it's Intel, but who really cares?) That machine was gonna run Linux and it was going to be the premiere workstation with integrated video, massive textures on 3D models, etc.... Well, microsoft legal and sgi legal hosed that with the drivers necessary being buried for all time, right after the box was shown at siggraph...
But they do want to obsolete all existing radios through an eventual all digital transition. It will be a long time coming, but the idea is that radio will be all digital at some point in the future.
"Ibiquity --owning radio on the industries own dime."
They are the ones at the root of this digital effort. The system is called IBOC. Look it up as HD Radio and read the Ibiquity PR.
Totally. That's why I find the Atari homebrew
on
Hope Fading at Atari
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
scene interesting and fun these days.
http://www.atariage.com/ has an active home brew community that is working on some very interesting stuff. The tech is old, but that does not seem to matter very much where creativity is concerned. I've seen a steady progress of 2600 improvements over the years that's just great to watch and participate in.
It's a lot like the 80's when we were all writing games for one another, playing them and having fun.
already own. Those SONY christmas gifts, perhaps a television, etc...
I'm going to do just that (got a coupla SONY products this year) and believe it will pack a nice punch compared to just avoiding SONY products in the future.
A few years back, I decided to abandon all software I was not either entitled to use (open source, freeware, paid licenses, etc...) and could not afford to own.
For a while It was a real bitch, but then things changed. While I've been a Linux user since the mid 90's, I really didn't fully explore OSS until about 2000. What I found was that a lot of software is simply not necessary. Using the software I had in more creative ways, or simply learning (again) to work without some software has had clear benefits to me, both in terms of dollars saved and in terms of just being able to work in the first place.
Today, I own a coupla pieces of commercial software and the rest is all OSS. That more than piracy is resulting in lost sales. If they really succeed in cutting down on piracy, the OSS side of things is just going to get a lot worse for them and they know it.
The only solid way to keep the proprietary, "pay as often as we can get you to pay to compute" model sustainable is to change the rules of the game such that OSS alternatives are driven back underground. This continues to happen where multi-media applications are concerned, but that's not enough. Getting Ogle from another country really does not affect anyone as the DVD player devices are all bundled with some goofy player anyway.
Getting OpenOffice, GIMP, web browsers, development tools, etc... back out of the mainstream will make a big difference. I suspect the approach will be to slowly move legislative opinion in this direction, then deal with citizen complaints through "access programs" very similar in nature to what the big phama companies do today.
Can't afford that lifesaving drug? Simple, if you beg and prove you really, really are gonna die without their property, they will "give" it to you rather than do the right thing.
Software companies are going to end up trying the same things, IMHO.
I regularly write my elected representatives about OSS issues. I let them know I write OSS software and why and what value the growing body of OSS software brings to anyone willing to participate. Participation can be as simple as just using the software of your choice or as involved as developing, training, distributing, etc... We all benefit.
Oh, the one biggie I always mention is the fact that OSS is unique in that value received is more than value contributed for everyone involved because no material goods are required to make use of the combined result. This is important because many industry (closed industry) lobbiests equate this value proposition as an "unsustainable ponzi type scheme" that does more harm than good as it takes advantage of contributors without "closing the value chain". Translation: We can't compete with free and the world (read government) needs us here.
Back on topic: The IP battle is imporant here in the US because we have outsourced darn near everything else, yet we still consume an awful lot per capita. Unless the world can be convinced that IP is viable, we are going to become increasingly hard pressed to restore that balance in the coming years.
On one hand, I'm not looking forward to us having to figure that out. And IP is an easy out. On the other, I sure don't want OSS going anywhere because it's primary value to me is not the cost savings, but the near total computing freedom that comes along for the ride.
One of my favorite computers happens to be an older SGI computer. OSS keeps that machine viable. Any of us, who know what we are doing, can take pretty much any combination of computing hardware we can get our hands on and be productive with it. As time goes on, I find this to be quite compelling in that I can continue to compute just the way I want to, not how I am told.
IP takes all of that away and I KNOW that's a bad thing, simply because being left with no alternatives means near total control of our computing environment. History has shown time and time again that scenario never is
Thanks for asking. I've relapsed. Thought I had it until major family stress hit. It was far too easy to just buy a pack and smoke just one. (yeah, I know stupid...) I think had I gone a bit longer, it would all have been ok.
Doesn't help that the bloody things are basically everywhere either.
Giving it another go on the 15th actually. Maybe this time I'll see some better success:) The good news is that I still really want to quit. Didn't before, but just thought it was the right thing to do. This little episode nailed that issue for me. They gotta go.
The school works for us, not the other way around. They may be trained as educators, but they have nothing on honest, caring, critical thinking parents where raising kids is concerned.
Most of the crap kids must endure these days is directly related to making the job easier for the educators. A noble goal, and one that I support. However, this goal must not get in the way of helping kids to learn citizenship, responsibility and ethics --along with their rights and responsibilities.
If the school does something lame with your kid, do not let it slide because the damage is minor, or resolving the issue takes time. Address it completely and fully and make sure your kid knows why this is being done and what the value is.
Often the school will want the parents to meet with the educator without the student in kind of a settlement meeting. The idea being to come to a solution that insures no educator loses face. Don't do that. If the problem involves your kid, then the discussion is fair game as well.
There are a lot of things about my school district that I don't like, and there are a lot of things I do like too. My point is they are not perfect, even though they try really hard to convey that to both kids and parents. Once they realize you see through that and require they deal fair, many issues get a lot easier as time goes on.
I'm happy this kid got to actually speak. I am also worried that he does not see the flip side of the issue; namely, that free speech has consequenses. Later in life, he might speak and be right for doing so, but might not consider the consequenses of his speech where his peers are concerned.
Who knows though. Might be a smart young man who just learned a valuable lesson early enough to really make a difference. Just worry a little that it might go to his head, that's all.
If the student is reading this: Good luck in life, young man, but be sure to think your future speech all the way through before speaking!
(Not that you did anything wrong, because you didn't. It's just that speaking out does not always equal a nice bankroll.)
I did read it and some of my concerns still stand.
Notably, the voting record created by the voter is preserved through counting --as a ballot so to speak. --Nice.. It's actually quite similar in basic structure to our vote by mail system here in Oregon.
The system does not allow for voter verification, but does allow for post election audits with preserved voting records.
Honestly, this is probably the best system I have seen. I've been following e-voting in the US for a while. It's a fricking mess. This actually is going to work fairly well. I'm extremely happy they support the concept of the ballot as they do.
My primary beef still stands however, and that is the chain of trust between voter intent and the record of the vote is broken when electronic (or many mechanical) means is used to cast the vote. It's a vote by proxy. Pretty damn good proxy, but still vote by proxy.
Where that proxy exists, there are going to be problems.
Again, it's very solid. Compared to the early crude crap used here in the US that's not even networked really, it's golden.
If I were forced to use a system, I would favor this one over others.
One thing that was not clear was the personally identifiable nature of the votes. They are keyed to people, but encrypted. (Nice) What checks are there on post election decryption and archival storage of ballots?
Where this issue is concerned, the vote by mail system involves opening the outer envelope, after the vote has been verified legal, and adding the raw ballots together prior to counting. Post election, the ballots are available for examination, recounts, etc... but no vote can then be identified to belong to a person, save for expensive foresnic techniques.
It's well distributed, like vote by mail is as well. Thats a clear improvment over the usual polling place issues. Votes distributed over time and space provide a nice check on fraud and force those who would be elected to consider their message over a longer time than just before election day.
I've written here that electronic voting cannot be trusted without personally identifiable votes. That appears to hold true for this system as well.
So it's not as bad as I made out at first, but it's still a vote by proxy. That's just not ok, IMHO.
I think it's helpful within the scope of communicating the votes, but does nothing to verify accuracy of voter intent.
So the voter picks 'bob' for president. How does the voter know their vote for 'bob' was added to the final tally for 'bob'?
Don't get me wrong, I like this system better than I do the mess currently being used in the US, but is still has the issue of voting by proxy.
If there is a problem (and there will be problems), the voter intent is not actually recorded. The mouse click, touch screen impulse, etc... is interpeted by the machine and that interpetation is then sent on for the tally.
That breaks the chain of trust between the voter and the vote cast.
With a physical record, the act of actually making the record of the vote and the intent are one and the same. (Unless one is using one of those goofy mechanical machines.)
That's where the problem lies.
This system is very good at communication, probably is redundant where records are stored and counted, but lacks the trust necessary for the voter to reaffirm their vote cast reflects their intent.
What if someone wants a recount? Do we simply retally the existing electronic records, which may or may not be corrupt? How trustworthy is that really?
Also, this system denies the general public the oversight they are entitled to as a part of the democratic process. Nobody can see the votes move toward the final tally. Nobody can verify the count in progress.
Though the voting system is open, which I commend them for doing, how does the average voter understand what code is running on their machine exactly? Again, binaries can be verified, but are they actually doing that? (Strongly doubt it as this brings the cost up considerably.)
If you want to understand the will of the people, you have to get the people involved. This system does not do that and that's a problem in and of itself.
Groups of people, involved in their civic process, provide necessary oversight, lacking from complex technologies.
The ballot remains invisible and cannot be overseen except via proxy.
This forces the voter to trust a third party in order to vote. Where that chain of trust is broken, problems can and will occur, thus making the election untrustworthy.
Again, it's a far better system than the US is using, but it's still a vote by proxy. Untrustworthy.
---and even if they do have some idea today, they won't when they crank up the numbers.
With electronic voting, the ballots are invisible. Nobody can be assured their ballot tallied is the same as their ballot cast. Period, end of story.
If they tag the votes to the voters, they could audit to double check things, but that's a big problem too. You can't have a free will if those in charge know what your choices were. That's why we don't have votes tied to voters here. Our founders knew better.
Without being able to personally identify the votes cast to the voters, they cannot be assured the system actually honored the voters intent. Open Source, closed source does not matter.
It's the form the vote is recorded in that matters. Nobody can see electrons and other subtle physical things used to record machine useable voting records and that's the problem because it forces the people to vote by proxy. Where there is a proxy, manupulation of the process is going to happen. That's just how we are.
If the votes are stored on physical media, then the results of the election can be known and trusted. Also, the act of indicating your voter intent and making the record is one an the same. --No proxy in most cases, save those goofy machines with punches. The voter knows the record they placed on the ballot and can walk away knowing their vote is correct.
When it comes time for counting, machines can read the human made records and humans can watch that happen. Other humans can check the records and audit the machines. If it's all nuts, lots of humans can watch each other count all the ballots...
As for this direct democracy crap, it's just a smoke screen. Oooh our leaders won't want to hear what we have to say. Bull shit. The electronic machines mean they don't actually have to, not the other way around!
What better way to devalue the democratic process. Make it easy and quick. Fewer expectations that way, and it's supposedly cheaper too!
Want an informed and active population that actually self-governs? Put the process in their hands, not some corporation or other exclusive club. There are always plenty of people able to help run the election, we don't need the machines and never will.
These poor fuckers are going to watch their democracy evaporate one machine at a time. Watch that nation and see if it runs significantly different in the near term. When the people are no longer a check on their own government, things will change for the worse.
Look at the USA for clear evidence of that.
30 percent of our national vote was cast with invisible ballots. We have no fucking idea who won '04, only who says they won.
This is a viewer application, it's on Linux too. One can see data created via Solidworks on a win32 PC, that's about it. Well, measure, etc...
Solidworks is about as closely married to the win32 API as one can get. They stated this goal early in their development process and have not deviated one iota.
The whole integrated deal will keep a lot of MCAD off of Mac and Linux for a very long time to come yet. Microsoft is very aggressive in this area, working with vendors closely to interlink CAD with Office. The combination is good, however it will remain win32 as well. (Sigh...)
The older cad packages, that still have UNIX versions, are more likely ports. We have PTC on Linux today, it's not too much of a stretch to see OSX --provided there is demand. That's what all the vendors what to see. Tell them and tell your friends to tell them.
Better: Inquire about their software, get them to do a demo, then tell 'em you need it on the Mac. As they walk out the door, know they will be carrying that information with them to their technical marketing people. --Those are the folks that need to be sold.
Don't say Mac up front either... just keep the discussion about CAD and needs. The assumption will be win32. (It always is) Then drop the Mac bomb on them.
some more for it. I can pay far more easily than the target audience can, so that's not a problem.
I've got wind-up cell phone charger and radio. Why not a computer as well. Having a few 12Volt items around the house, along with the human powered things is just great for outages or camping.
Crosses fingers, hoping these hit big.
The clock speed is a bit slow, but not so slow that it's a problem. If there are a ton of these out there, 500Mhz is a nice target for application optimization. It needs to get done at some point, why not target these babies?
The people alredy know what is out there. Had they censored early on, the damage would have been far less. As it is today, too many people are aware of things and will continue to seek the information they want/need.
It will take a while, but the chinese people will learn enough to demand change someday.
There is no need to support all the different Linuxes, just do one and call it good. Hardware is cheap, applications can run over X, allowing application servers dedicated to specific apps, Linuxes are open so compatability tweaks can be done at any level. (Similar to the standard system load performed by most companies these days)
I've spoken to a few major software development teams and they don't get this at all. They see a support nightmare with all the different versions. Open scares the hell out of them because they don't have any real control over what users do.
Why bother with all of that? Let the users do what they will and support those that play ball. The community will evolve whatever is necessary to handle the exceptions and it won't cost a dime. If your app sees wide use, you can bet there will be communities that form around it. Those folks will largely support themselves. In fact, starting such a community would solve the problem and focus the efforts in one known place. Sheesh.
And that's the problem. Your server might be overseas, but living here in the states still lets the authorities keep you from blogging. I suppose one could work through proxys, but that makes interviews & other one to one bits a little tough. Also people might not be as willing to read that anon blog as they would a blog they know the author of. Moving the server will keep the speech online, but will still chill the speaker.
However another post did show this legislation does not apply to blogs (yet), so this is probably moot.
The funny thing is that John Stewart, who is on Comedy Central, happens to be far more accurate than Bill O, ever was. --and he is hilarious at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I still use my SGI machines. I've an older Indy, that just is a file server and an O2 that still makes a great desktop machine.
Over the years, IRIX and SGI have been good to me. Thought I would put a few things down here that were worth it:
-never lost a filesystem. Many folks I worked with carried their configuration from machine type to machine type over the years. (indy, o2, octane)
-love the interactivity of the desktop. Still do actually. It's clean, fast and makes sense. The extra desks function is just great for administrating lots of PC machines these days. Just run vncviewer on as many desks as you have machines to handle and go. Since IRIX ignores ctrl-alt-delete, when running full screen one forgets they are not on the local machine at times.
-be sure and swing by nekochan.net. Great IRIX community who loves the machines.
My O2 is slow sometimes, but it sure corners well. One thing I just love about IRIX is it's task scheduler. Even when the machine is just hammered, it's interactivity remains very high. Wish we could see more of that in other OSes today. We do, but it just does not feel quite the same.
-Red mouse pointer! Brilliant, have made a set for every OS since.
OS documentation! Oh man, if we only had that level of documentation for other Oses. Not only do you get to understand how your OS works, but also get an education at the same time. I miss the 'sgi way' of thinking about things the most sometimes.
My biggest peeve was with the 320 / 540 series machines. Shared memory like the O2, but with a nice fast CPU. (I know it's Intel, but who really cares?) That machine was gonna run Linux and it was going to be the premiere workstation with integrated video, massive textures on 3D models, etc.... Well, microsoft legal and sgi legal hosed that with the drivers necessary being buried for all time, right after the box was shown at siggraph...
Bastards.
Lots more to say, maybe later.
No.
Next.
But they do want to obsolete all existing radios through an eventual all digital transition. It will be a long time coming, but the idea is that radio will be all digital at some point in the future.
"Ibiquity --owning radio on the industries own dime."
They are the ones at the root of this digital effort. The system is called IBOC. Look it up as HD Radio and read the Ibiquity PR.
scene interesting and fun these days.
http://www.atariage.com/ has an active home brew community that is working on some very interesting stuff. The tech is old, but that does not seem to matter very much where creativity is concerned. I've seen a steady progress of 2600 improvements over the years that's just great to watch and participate in.
It's a lot like the 80's when we were all writing games for one another, playing them and having fun.
Nice list --and one I completely agree with.
Mine: (in addition to yours)
KABOOM!
TEMPEST
FF7
Perfect Dark (multi player)
Q3A
DEFENDER
ROBOTRON
Funny how the old games were named in CAPS huh?
already own. Those SONY christmas gifts, perhaps a television, etc...
I'm going to do just that (got a coupla SONY products this year) and believe it will pack a nice punch compared to just avoiding SONY products in the future.
atrategy for battling Open Source.
A few years back, I decided to abandon all software I was not either entitled to use (open source, freeware, paid licenses, etc...) and could not afford to own.
For a while It was a real bitch, but then things changed. While I've been a Linux user since the mid 90's, I really didn't fully explore OSS until about 2000. What I found was that a lot of software is simply not necessary. Using the software I had in more creative ways, or simply learning (again) to work without some software has had clear benefits to me, both in terms of dollars saved and in terms of just being able to work in the first place.
Today, I own a coupla pieces of commercial software and the rest is all OSS. That more than piracy is resulting in lost sales. If they really succeed in cutting down on piracy, the OSS side of things is just going to get a lot worse for them and they know it.
The only solid way to keep the proprietary, "pay as often as we can get you to pay to compute" model sustainable is to change the rules of the game such that OSS alternatives are driven back underground. This continues to happen where multi-media applications are concerned, but that's not enough. Getting Ogle from another country really does not affect anyone as the DVD player devices are all bundled with some goofy player anyway.
Getting OpenOffice, GIMP, web browsers, development tools, etc... back out of the mainstream will make a big difference. I suspect the approach will be to slowly move legislative opinion in this direction, then deal with citizen complaints through "access programs" very similar in nature to what the big phama companies do today.
Can't afford that lifesaving drug? Simple, if you beg and prove you really, really are gonna die without their property, they will "give" it to you rather than do the right thing.
Software companies are going to end up trying the same things, IMHO.
I regularly write my elected representatives about OSS issues. I let them know I write OSS software and why and what value the growing body of OSS software brings to anyone willing to participate. Participation can be as simple as just using the software of your choice or as involved as developing, training, distributing, etc... We all benefit.
Oh, the one biggie I always mention is the fact that OSS is unique in that value received is more than value contributed for everyone involved because no material goods are required to make use of the combined result. This is important because many industry (closed industry) lobbiests equate this value proposition as an "unsustainable ponzi type scheme" that does more harm than good as it takes advantage of contributors without "closing the value chain". Translation: We can't compete with free and the world (read government) needs us here.
Back on topic: The IP battle is imporant here in the US because we have outsourced darn near everything else, yet we still consume an awful lot per capita. Unless the world can be convinced that IP is viable, we are going to become increasingly hard pressed to restore that balance in the coming years.
On one hand, I'm not looking forward to us having to figure that out. And IP is an easy out. On the other, I sure don't want OSS going anywhere because it's primary value to me is not the cost savings, but the near total computing freedom that comes along for the ride.
One of my favorite computers happens to be an older SGI computer. OSS keeps that machine viable. Any of us, who know what we are doing, can take pretty much any combination of computing hardware we can get our hands on and be productive with it. As time goes on, I find this to be quite compelling in that I can continue to compute just the way I want to, not how I am told.
IP takes all of that away and I KNOW that's a bad thing, simply because being left with no alternatives means near total control of our computing environment. History has shown time and time again that scenario never is
Thanks for asking. I've relapsed. Thought I had it until major family stress hit. It was far too easy to just buy a pack and smoke just one. (yeah, I know stupid...) I think had I gone a bit longer, it would all have been ok.
:) The good news is that I still really want to quit. Didn't before, but just thought it was the right thing to do. This little episode nailed that issue for me. They gotta go.
Doesn't help that the bloody things are basically everywhere either.
Giving it another go on the 15th actually. Maybe this time I'll see some better success
really didn't make my comment clear. Oh well, such is life and this is /. afterall.
Normally don't reply to AC --see my journal for why. However, you missed the point of my comment.
I know it has little relevance to the major topic at hand. I was just addressing the parent comment with a little reinforcement.
early, right out of the gate.
The school works for us, not the other way around. They may be trained as educators, but they have nothing on honest, caring, critical thinking parents where raising kids is concerned.
Most of the crap kids must endure these days is directly related to making the job easier for the educators. A noble goal, and one that I support. However, this goal must not get in the way of helping kids to learn citizenship, responsibility and ethics --along with their rights and responsibilities.
If the school does something lame with your kid, do not let it slide because the damage is minor, or resolving the issue takes time. Address it completely and fully and make sure your kid knows why this is being done and what the value is.
Often the school will want the parents to meet with the educator without the student in kind of a settlement meeting. The idea being to come to a solution that insures no educator loses face. Don't do that. If the problem involves your kid, then the discussion is fair game as well.
There are a lot of things about my school district that I don't like, and there are a lot of things I do like too. My point is they are not perfect, even though they try really hard to convey that to both kids and parents. Once they realize you see through that and require they deal fair, many issues get a lot easier as time goes on.
I'm happy this kid got to actually speak. I am also worried that he does not see the flip side of the issue; namely, that free speech has consequenses. Later in life, he might speak and be right for doing so, but might not consider the consequenses of his speech where his peers are concerned.
Who knows though. Might be a smart young man who just learned a valuable lesson early enough to really make a difference. Just worry a little that it might go to his head, that's all.
If the student is reading this: Good luck in life, young man, but be sure to think your future speech all the way through before speaking!
(Not that you did anything wrong, because you didn't. It's just that speaking out does not always equal a nice bankroll.)
I did read it and some of my concerns still stand.
Notably, the voting record created by the voter is preserved through counting --as a ballot so to speak. --Nice.. It's actually quite similar in basic structure to our vote by mail system here in Oregon.
The system does not allow for voter verification, but does allow for post election audits with preserved voting records.
Honestly, this is probably the best system I have seen. I've been following e-voting in the US for a while. It's a fricking mess. This actually is going to work fairly well. I'm extremely happy they support the concept of the ballot as they do.
My primary beef still stands however, and that is the chain of trust between voter intent and the record of the vote is broken when electronic (or many mechanical) means is used to cast the vote. It's a vote by proxy. Pretty damn good proxy, but still vote by proxy.
Where that proxy exists, there are going to be problems.
Again, it's very solid. Compared to the early crude crap used here in the US that's not even networked really, it's golden.
If I were forced to use a system, I would favor this one over others.
One thing that was not clear was the personally identifiable nature of the votes. They are keyed to people, but encrypted. (Nice) What checks are there on post election decryption and archival storage of ballots?
Where this issue is concerned, the vote by mail system involves opening the outer envelope, after the vote has been verified legal, and adding the raw ballots together prior to counting. Post election, the ballots are available for examination, recounts, etc... but no vote can then be identified to belong to a person, save for expensive foresnic techniques.
It's well distributed, like vote by mail is as well. Thats a clear improvment over the usual polling place issues. Votes distributed over time and space provide a nice check on fraud and force those who would be elected to consider their message over a longer time than just before election day.
I've written here that electronic voting cannot be trusted without personally identifiable votes. That appears to hold true for this system as well.
So it's not as bad as I made out at first, but it's still a vote by proxy. That's just not ok, IMHO.
I think it's helpful within the scope of communicating the votes, but does nothing to verify accuracy of voter intent.
So the voter picks 'bob' for president. How does the voter know their vote for 'bob' was added to the final tally for 'bob'?
Don't get me wrong, I like this system better than I do the mess currently being used in the US, but is still has the issue of voting by proxy.
If there is a problem (and there will be problems), the voter intent is not actually recorded. The mouse click, touch screen impulse, etc... is interpeted by the machine and that interpetation is then sent on for the tally.
That breaks the chain of trust between the voter and the vote cast.
With a physical record, the act of actually making the record of the vote and the intent are one and the same. (Unless one is using one of those goofy mechanical machines.)
That's where the problem lies.
This system is very good at communication, probably is redundant where records are stored and counted, but lacks the trust necessary for the voter to reaffirm their vote cast reflects their intent.
What if someone wants a recount? Do we simply retally the existing electronic records, which may or may not be corrupt? How trustworthy is that really?
Also, this system denies the general public the oversight they are entitled to as a part of the democratic process. Nobody can see the votes move toward the final tally. Nobody can verify the count in progress.
Though the voting system is open, which I commend them for doing, how does the average voter understand what code is running on their machine exactly? Again, binaries can be verified, but are they actually doing that? (Strongly doubt it as this brings the cost up considerably.)
If you want to understand the will of the people, you have to get the people involved. This system does not do that and that's a problem in and of itself.
Groups of people, involved in their civic process, provide necessary oversight, lacking from complex technologies.
The ballot remains invisible and cannot be overseen except via proxy.
This forces the voter to trust a third party in order to vote. Where that chain of trust is broken, problems can and will occur, thus making the election untrustworthy.
Again, it's a far better system than the US is using, but it's still a vote by proxy. Untrustworthy.
---and even if they do have some idea today, they won't when they crank up the numbers.
With electronic voting, the ballots are invisible. Nobody can be assured their ballot tallied is the same as their ballot cast. Period, end of story.
If they tag the votes to the voters, they could audit to double check things, but that's a big problem too. You can't have a free will if those in charge know what your choices were. That's why we don't have votes tied to voters here. Our founders knew better.
Without being able to personally identify the votes cast to the voters, they cannot be assured the system actually honored the voters intent. Open Source, closed source does not matter.
It's the form the vote is recorded in that matters. Nobody can see electrons and other subtle physical things used to record machine useable voting records and that's the problem because it forces the people to vote by proxy. Where there is a proxy, manupulation of the process is going to happen. That's just how we are.
If the votes are stored on physical media, then the results of the election can be known and trusted. Also, the act of indicating your voter intent and making the record is one an the same. --No proxy in most cases, save those goofy machines with punches. The voter knows the record they placed on the ballot and can walk away knowing their vote is correct.
When it comes time for counting, machines can read the human made records and humans can watch that happen. Other humans can check the records and audit the machines. If it's all nuts, lots of humans can watch each other count all the ballots...
As for this direct democracy crap, it's just a smoke screen. Oooh our leaders won't want to hear what we have to say. Bull shit. The electronic machines mean they don't actually have to, not the other way around!
What better way to devalue the democratic process. Make it easy and quick. Fewer expectations that way, and it's supposedly cheaper too!
Want an informed and active population that actually self-governs? Put the process in their hands, not some corporation or other exclusive club. There are always plenty of people able to help run the election, we don't need the machines and never will.
These poor fuckers are going to watch their democracy evaporate one machine at a time. Watch that nation and see if it runs significantly different in the near term. When the people are no longer a check on their own government, things will change for the worse.
Look at the USA for clear evidence of that.
30 percent of our national vote was cast with invisible ballots. We have no fucking idea who won '04, only who says they won.
This is a viewer application, it's on Linux too. One can see data created via Solidworks on a win32 PC, that's about it. Well, measure, etc...
Solidworks is about as closely married to the win32 API as one can get. They stated this goal early in their development process and have not deviated one iota.
The whole integrated deal will keep a lot of MCAD off of Mac and Linux for a very long time to come yet. Microsoft is very aggressive in this area, working with vendors closely to interlink CAD with Office. The combination is good, however it will remain win32 as well. (Sigh...)
The older cad packages, that still have UNIX versions, are more likely ports. We have PTC on Linux today, it's not too much of a stretch to see OSX --provided there is demand. That's what all the vendors what to see. Tell them and tell your friends to tell them.
Better: Inquire about their software, get them to do a demo, then tell 'em you need it on the Mac. As they walk out the door, know they will be carrying that information with them to their technical marketing people. --Those are the folks that need to be sold.
Don't say Mac up front either... just keep the discussion about CAD and needs. The assumption will be win32. (It always is) Then drop the Mac bomb on them.
Kids are on myspace.com and xanga.com
Strike!
I've got an older model that allows the Internet Sharing & auto commercial skip. (Way cool.)
The newer ones lack these features, but are otherwise great PVR's. Just wondering why nobody ever mentions them.
Traditional media does an awful lot of reselling and repurposing of content.
I've seen it all.
I say leave things as they are and let some of the brighter bulbs, who grok digital, rise to the top and make some money.
That's what this is really all about anyway.
or a pcmcia network adapter.
Lets you move the software at will and avoid a lot of hassles at upgrade machine time.
some more for it. I can pay far more easily than the target audience can, so that's not a problem.
I've got wind-up cell phone charger and radio. Why not a computer as well. Having a few 12Volt items around the house, along with the human powered things is just great for outages or camping.
Crosses fingers, hoping these hit big.
The clock speed is a bit slow, but not so slow that it's a problem. If there are a ton of these out there, 500Mhz is a nice target for application optimization. It needs to get done at some point, why not target these babies?
The people alredy know what is out there. Had they censored early on, the damage would have been far less. As it is today, too many people are aware of things and will continue to seek the information they want/need.
It will take a while, but the chinese people will learn enough to demand change someday.
You and I both know they want it to happen. Too much critical thinking and honest communication going on.
let the users sort it out.
There is no need to support all the different Linuxes, just do one and call it good. Hardware is cheap, applications can run over X, allowing application servers dedicated to specific apps, Linuxes are open so compatability tweaks can be done at any level. (Similar to the standard system load performed by most companies these days)
I've spoken to a few major software development teams and they don't get this at all. They see a support nightmare with all the different versions. Open scares the hell out of them because they don't have any real control over what users do.
Why bother with all of that? Let the users do what they will and support those that play ball. The community will evolve whatever is necessary to handle the exceptions and it won't cost a dime. If your app sees wide use, you can bet there will be communities that form around it. Those folks will largely support themselves. In fact, starting such a community would solve the problem and focus the efforts in one known place. Sheesh.
And that's the problem. Your server might be overseas, but living here in the states still lets the authorities keep you from blogging. I suppose one could work through proxys, but that makes interviews & other one to one bits a little tough. Also people might not be as willing to read that anon blog as they would a blog they know the author of. Moving the server will keep the speech online, but will still chill the speaker.
However another post did show this legislation does not apply to blogs (yet), so this is probably moot.
The funny thing is that John Stewart, who is on Comedy Central, happens to be far more accurate than Bill O, ever was. --and he is hilarious at the same time.
I'm not sure Comedy Central would have him!